Художественная литература на иностранных языках

'Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And, live we how we can, yet die we must' What is the true meaning of power? Are some simply born to it or can it be acquired like a skill? Does it always breed corruption and greed or can it be a force for good? From kings to prisoners and fr...

'I want to give a really bad party. I mean it. I want to give a party where there's a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt and women passed out in the cabinet de toilette. You wait and see.' The crackle of gin on ice, the first chords of the band, the low hum of go...

'Wealth and beggary, virtue and vice, repletion and the direst hunger, all treading on each other and crowding together' Could any writer portray London better than Charles Dickens? Dickens knew the city inside out, walking the streets day and night, in all weathers, and drawing inspiration from...

Julio Cortazar's crazed masterpiece, the forbearer of the Latin Boom in the 1960s - published in Vintage Classics for the first time 'Cortazar's masterpiece. This is the first great novel of Spanish America... A powerful anti-novel but, like deeply understood moments in life itself, rich with ma...

A collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style. 'Julio Cortazar is truly a sorcerer and the best of him is here, in these hilariously fraught and almost eerily affecting stories' Kevin Barry A grieving family home becomes the site of a ter...

Enter the surreal and enchanting world of Haruki Murakami. Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Ok...

A delightful insight into the formation of an artist who would become one of the world's most respected writers. Born in 1922 in the tiny Portuguese village of Azinhaga, Jose Saramago was only a baby when his family moved to a series of cramped lodgings in a working-class neighbourhood of Lisbon...

Jose Saramago takes us on a thrilling literary journey through the land, history and culture of his native country. From the misty mountains of the north to the southern seascape of the Algarve, the travels of Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago are a passionate rediscovery of his own land. Embarking ...

'Graham Greene has wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the top ranks of world literature' John le Carre The Third Man, Graham Greene's most iconic tale, takes place in post-war Vienna, a 'smashed dreary city' occupied by t...

'Manages to say more about love, hate, happiness, grief, immortality, greed and the disgustingly rich than most contemporary English novels three times the length' The Times Doctor Fischer despises the human race. A millionaire with a taste for sadism, he spends his time and money planning notor...

Woolf's textured prose invites us into each of the characters' minds as we follow them on a winding, decade-long journey to the lighthouse. Mr and Mrs Ramsay and their eight children have always holidayed at their summer house in Skye, surrounded by family friends. But as time passes, bringing w...

Follow a dark and powerful journey up the Congo River in Conrad's sharp and incisive exploration of the damages of imperialism. Life on the river is brutal, and unknown threats lurk in the darkness; the silence of the jungle is broken only by the ominous sound of drumming. Marlow's mission to c...

A beautiful new edition of Mary Shelley's Gothic horror classic, Frankenstein INCLUDES A CULTURAL HISTORY OF FRANKENSTEIN'S MONSTER BY JEANETTE WINTERSON Navigating the Arctic, the captain of a ship rescues a man wandering near death across the ice caps. How the man got there reveals itself a s...

'It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary' Rediscover Kafka's classic work of psychological horror. The Trial is the terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a c...

'No other voice has borne truer witness to the dark of our times' George Steiner After an embarrassing sexual misadventure with a servant girl, sixteen-year-old Karl Rossman is banished to America by his parents. Expected to redeem himself in the land of opportunity, Karl's youthful breeziness p...

Read Thomas Mann's meditation on the power of literary representation and the tyranny of the writer's imagination. Mann's novel, written some 150 years after Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, follows Lotte Kestner, Goethe's real-life heroine, as she makes a pilgrimage to Weimar to meet the ...

Discover Thomas Mann's comic novel of deception and misplaced confidence - back in print for the first time in over twenty years. Waiter by day, man about Paris by night; the young and good looking Felix Krull has created for himself a personality to charm and deceive the world of wealth. When t...

'You are the knife I turn inside myself' Franz Kafka's letters to his one-time muse, Milena Jesenska - an intimate window into the desires and hopes of the twentieth-century's most prophetic and important writer Kafka first made the acquaintance of Milena Jesenska in 1920 when she was translati...

Discover George Eliot's powerful tragedy about the struggle between head and heart. **As Heard on BBC Radio 4** Maggie and Tom Tulliver are both wilful, passionate children, and their relationship has always been tempestuous. As they grow up together on the banks of the River Floss, Tom's self-...

A heartwarming and poignant tale of a lonely man brought back to life and faith. Silas Marner lives a friendless and isolated existence near the country village of Raveloe, hoarding his gold. One night his fortune is stolen and Silas loses everything he holds dear. But then the golden-haired chi...